Market My Novel

The post, "One Author Speaks Out About the Bad Side of Online Promotions," generated a lot of virtual discussion. As a result of comments, I'm going to tackle a few additional topics that came out of it. These topics will begin with "Online Marketing," and be numbered. You can find these topics by clicking the "Online Marketing" category.

Today's topic: Be Reasonable.

Many of those who commented were pretty tough on the anonymous author, who posted very candid replies to detailed questions about an online marketing strategy that ultimately failed.

The author's online strategy equaled a full-time job, which wore the author out to the point that he/she does not want to check e-mail now. The author lost out on family time, and the family – well, they were pushed to the brink of sanity because the author was stressed and unable to help out in the usual family ways.

The author believed this strategy would put him/her into the blogostratosphere and, ultimately, lead to big sales.

That did not happen.

There are lessons to be learned from this experience, and I think we should all take them to heart – and profusely thank this author for being so candid and taking hits from those of us who read the interview with 20/20 hindsight.

Reasonable Expectations

I think the author had the right idea, but I think the expectations
were too high for a newly-published author. As a social media
consultant, I caution my clients until I lose oxygen that starting a
blog isn't going to immediately lead to new sales, donations,
referrals, etc. For newly-started blogs, it takes a year to start
getting truly noticed by peers, newbies and the competition. (There are
a few exceptions, of course.)

It does not matter if you are new to the blogosphere or not. If you are newly published, you are starting from scratch. Instead of just connecting with work colleagues, friends and family online, or others with similar hobbies, you need to connect with readers and reviewers. Your online strategy must be more targeted, focused. 

When starting out, worry more about branding and developing a solid fan base online, not so much sales. Also, understand that while you may not make a big splash in the beginning, online posts have longevity that print and broadcast interviews do not. They are on the Web forever. That means someone could find out about you in two years, forward your book links to all their friends and produce big sales numbers. At Pop Syndicate, where I host authors on virtual book tours, I've had readers find author interviews over a year later – and it prompted them to buy the book.

Cheryl C. Malandrinos, a virtual book tour consultant with Pump Up Your Book Promotion, had some great things to say about reasonable virtual book tour expectations in her interview with Market My Novel.

Reasonable Work Hours

Do NOT kill yourself when doing virtual tours. Figure out what a reasonable schedule is for you – and stick to it. You may have some days that are busier than others, but that will happen. Search for a balance that you can make work for you.

Do as much work in advance as you can. Have five to ten guest blog posts ready – perhaps use three topics and write about them different ways – and have a thorough Q&A available if sites want to pick it up.

For some authors, you may only want to do guest blog posts, instead of Q&As, which take a lot more time. If so, be up front with sites about it. Tell them you'd like to appear and would they pick up a guest blog on whatever topic you write on. Be sure the topic fits the blog.

It is easy to judge this author for what they did wrong, but we should also applaud them for sharing their experiences in a public forum to help other authors avoid mistakes.